License to Love (23 page)

Outside she stopped abruptly, causing Alicia to stop and
look at her.

“I’m sorry I left,” Molly started. “I don’t know why yet,
but I’m sorry it caused so much pain.” Her friend stepped close and wrapped her
arms around her, unable to speak. Molly didn’t know what else to add with
words, so she let the moment linger.

“We’ll figure this out, okay?” Alicia said, stepping back.
Molly nodded before they started for the car.

As they walked to Alicia’s Mazda, Molly realized she did
plan on staying at least until she discovered a few answers, maybe longer.

The sky outside only held a few white clouds and a lot of
people were taking advantage of the sunshine and rise in temperature. They
drove through town on the main road and turned right near the other end, toward
the edge of town.

“Here’s your old house.”

Molly felt dismayed as she saw the baby blue house with
white trim. The place looked so welcoming with the wide porch, the padded
wicker chairs, and flower pots.

“It’s quaint. A cute, country kind of quaint.”

“You say that like it’s weird,” Alicia said.

“Oh, no.” Molly corrected. “I wasn’t expecting it to look
like this, though. It’s so different from the house in California. Did the
house look so warm when my parents and I lived there?”

“You helped a lot. You planted the flower beds because you
loved growing things.”

Molly turned to look at Alicia now. “I did? I didn’t know
that.”

Next they drove thirty miles to the city and to a mall where
Alicia said they spent a lot of time at during high school. Inside, Alicia took
her to their favorite clothing store.

“This is so cute!” Molly looked through a rack of shirts.

“You used to have more of a country style,” Alicia told her.
“More casual, too.”

“I wonder what happened to my clothes. I only had a few
outfits when I first, well, you know.” Why hadn’t she ever wondered about that
before?

“Weird.”

“Hey, I like this.” Molly pulled a baby blue shirt from the
rack and found a pair of jeans and a few other things she liked.

“That looks more like you. You came back to town dressed
like your mother.”

Molly glanced up to see her expression, then they broke into
giggles.
“Feel like a movie after this?” Molly
asked.

Trent drummed his fingers on his desk while waiting for
Molly’s friend to pick up the phone. He almost hung up as the fifth ring
started, realizing he wasn’t going to get an answering machine.

“Hello?” The voice sounded groggy.

“Oh, I woke you, I’m sorry.”

“Well, who is this?”

“I’m Detective Trent Williams calling from Ridge City,
Oregon. Molly Anderson gave me your number. Is this Karen?”

“Oh, yes. She called and told me about you, but I didn’t
expect you to call me.”

He felt bad, realizing she must either work nights or be on
her day off, but he’d already ruined her sleep. “I wanted to ask you about when
you first met Molly.”

“Okay…Her parents brought her to the hospital on my shift,
baffled by her behavior.”

“Was she scared?” Trent heard the rus
hed sound of h
is voice.

“No.” Karen paused, and Trent wondered if she believed him
about who he was. She finally
continued, “S
he
didn’t know where she was, or who was with her. They told her, she seemed to
understand, and then she’d forget again. At the end of the day, the doctor
believed she had PTA.”

Lost, Trent said, “That’s not Parent Teacher Association?”

She laughed quickly but
returned
right
to business. “Post Traumatic Amnesia.”

“Okay, got that.” He jotted down the official name of
Molly’s condition and added, “I knew her before, but she didn’t recognize me
when she saw me.”

“Well, we were wrong.”

“Wrong?” Trent didn’t understand how it could be anything
else. Would Molly lie to him? He couldn’t believe that, wouldn’t believe it.

“You see, PTA traps someone in the present, unable to make
short term memories. They live minute to minute, after a brain injury, and it
usually doesn’t last over a month.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” he admitted, while thinking
Molly didn’t have that problem. Trent hoped Karen could give him information on
how to jump start Molly’s memory, if that’s what she needed to move on.

“There are around two million head injuries each year, seven
hundred thousand need hospitalization, and only about seventy percent of those
get PTA.”

“And Molly seemed to have this?”

“Several doctors agreed it looked likely, but they agreed it
was a tough diagnosis. Her symptoms weren’t consistent. So they decided to wait
a month, believing the condition would improve.”

He wrote
Symptoms?
on the top of a new page. “Do you
remember the cause of her injury?”

“She fell, they said. She couldn’t remember. I think they
said from a ladder several feet up onto pavement.”

“So what happened?”

“She went home. I checked on her daily. Frankly, I was
worried about her. She wasn’t afraid at the hospital, just confused, but as she
kept re-experiencing the confusion of not knowing who or where she was, she
started to panic.”

Trent held his breath so his emotion wouldn’t come through
in his breathing.
How horrifying
. His poor Molly. He chewed his lip, a
bad habit that surfaced when he was having trouble holding in his emotions.

After the stretched pause, Karen continued, “She did
improve, but the strange part was her memory before the accident never came
back. I don’t think she has a clear memory of that month, either.”

“But you said PTA lasts for about a month?”

“Yes, only a third of cases usually go past that. But she
exhibited symptoms of retrograde amnesia, where she couldn’t remember her past
before the accident.”

“So her case is unusual?”

“To say the least. I asked the doctors a lot of questions,
researched myself, but science doesn’t have every answer. And all these numbers
haven’t helped Molly.” Karen paused this time before she asked, “Am I speaking
to a friend? A friend to Molly?”

“Yes.”

“I believed you right away because Molly told me about how
you’re helping her. So I’ll tell you what I really think. But this is something
I haven’t shared with Molly.”

“Yes?” He felt sweat beads on his forehead.

“This seems more like a case of not wanting to talk.”

“Excuse me?” Trent again told himself Molly wouldn’t lie to
him. “Why do you think she’s hiding something?”

“Oh, no, not like that. Have you ever heard of someone who
wouldn’t speak after a traumatic incidence?”

“Yes, in movies.”

“I think Molly wants to regain her memory more than
anything, but she’s terrified of what she’ll find. I think part of her is
blocking her memory. You see, there wasn’t enough damage to her brain to
permanently erase her long term memory.”

“Okay.” He digested her theory. “So, with support, you think
she’ll remember everything?”

“Maybe, when, if, her mind decides she can handle the event
that made her want to forget.” When Trent didn’t comment, Karen added, “This
is, of course, my personal opinion, apart from medical science. I am just a
nurse. I’m not supposed to diagnose these kinds of things. But I’ve spent a lot
of time with Molly, and some time with her parents before they died, and I
think something awful did this to her.”

Trent still couldn’t speak.

“You’ll help her?” Karen asked.

“Yes.” He swallowed. “I’m going to get to the bottom of
this. For Molly.” And for them, but he didn’t add that part out loud.

Later Molly and Alicia headed back to Alicia
’s house la
ughing about the movie and how they
spilled popcorn everywhere. Alicia had even thrown a few pieces back at a pesky
kid in front of them. Molly noticed popcorn stuck in Alicia’s hair and pulled
it out, holding it up for her to see and causing more laughter.

“I want to show you one more place.” Alicia drove into Ridge
City and up a street Molly hadn’t seen yet, since she’d returned. A few blocks
up the road, Alicia said quietly, “That’s his house.”

After a long driveway, a wide brick house sat surrounded by
rose bushes. Molly pictured them in bloom, thinking maybe they were red because
that would set off the reds and oranges in the bricks. The lawn between the
house and link fence didn’t have a single weed, and looked  so perfectly thick
and good for lying on.
Under a starlit sky on a warm summer night, crickets
chirping, his arm under her head, talking about their dreams.

A car behind them honked and Alicia waved them by. After the
distraction, Molly tried to recapture the feeling that had just hit her, but it
was a blurry thought about laying on that perfectly kept lawn. The car sat in
neutral as Molly took in the house. Her eyes moved to the mailbox and the sign
swinging under it that read
Williams
.

“He’s been here a while?” she asked, wondering about a
single man who hangs a sign like that on his mailbox. She thought of him
watching her leave earlier that day, and how she felt when he looked at her.

“And plans to stay a while, too,” Alicia answered. “There’s
a five acre backyard. I love his house, it has a wide fireplace, open layout,
but it’s still cozy.”

“Hmm. It sounds really nice.” Molly wanted to go i
nside and see it for herself. She ask
ed, “Why didn’t
he bring me here?”

“Oh.” A long pause. “Maybe he doesn’t think you’re ready.”

Ready? Would she ever be ready? Her next question popped
into her head and out her mouth. “Has he dated?”

Wow she didn’t really want to know.

“Since?” Alicia almost snorted. “Of course not. He was in
love with you since kindergarten. We’ve always teased him because he’s so
practical and analytical about everything but loving you.”

Loving you
. Molly didn’t turn to look at her friend
as the words echoed over and over in her head.
Loving you.
Molly added
patience to Alicia’s list about Trent, because what kind of man waited around
for a woman for so long?

Alicia put the car in gear and drove back to her house where
they had lunch with David. He was polite enough not to ask if Molly remembered
anything that day, but his pointed look at his wife caused her to say, “No, not
a thing.”

They were eating salad, beer bread, and homemade clam chowd
er. It w
as so delicious Molly refused to let her
stomach wince in frustration. After only a day with Alicia, she trusted her.
Molly spoke up and said, “I want my memory back, but even more I want to
uncover why I took off, if I did, that is.”

“It is strange,” David murmured, and Alicia shot him a look.

“I agree, it is,” Molly said in David’s defense though she
wondered at Alicia’s
c
oncerned look. Her
friend seemed to tell things like she saw them. “I was with my parents, who
knew all of you were here looking for me, but they didn’t call anyone.”

“I wonder what they were running from.”

The thought had been teasing the back of Molly’s mind, but
she still jumped when she heard it said out loud. “I want to find that out,
too. I want to know all of it, and why they were keeping it from me.”

“Are you sure they were?” her friend asked. Molly admitted
she couldn’t be sure of anything, but she had a gut feeling
that something had forced them into leaving quickly. T
he
phone rang and David rose to answer it, letting the women continue the
conversation. A minute later, he told Molly that Trent wanted to take her out
for dinner that evening.

“Dinner?” What would she wear? Maybe she wasn’t ready for
dinner out with him. Her face flushed before Molly realized it was probably
more about getting down to business and solving all of this than . . .
dinner.
He needed to gather more information and get to the bottom of this mess.
That mess didn’t necessarily include her feelings for him, if she had feelings,
that is. She cleared her throat and tried to look normal, which was a bit tough
with Alicia grinning at her.

Clouds hung lazily above, separating the blue sky into
patches, while Trent walked up a familiar hill to an apple tree. Leaves
decorated the tree now that spring was in full force, and he spotted several
white blossoms opening. He’d come here weekly during the last four years. On
sunny days he remembered picnics with Molly and kissing under the tree. Their
special picnic when he proposed. On sad, rainy days, he remembered intimate
moments inside the house, by the fire or in bed. On those days, he looked up to
Heaven and asked why. He’d lost his life when Molly disappeared, but he had no
choice but to keep living. Going on alone wasn’t easy. Everything felt wrong.

Now she walked right back into his life, which didn’t make
sense either. Did he really care why though? Molly was back.

Today he looked up to Heaven and said, “Thank you.”

His cell phone rang. He usually turned it off when he needed
some time alone, but Molly had the number and he wanted to make sure she could
always get a hold of him.

It wasn’t Molly, but his boss, Kevin Davison.

“Trent, how’s the vacation going?” he asked. Kevin kept a
professional, but friendly, relationship with everyone he worked with, so while
Trent answered he wondered why Kevin was calling him. He usually jumped right
into business. “It’s going well, so far.”

“Trent, Judy Lofton’s making noise again.”

This wasn’t anything new. The postmaster, a middle aged
gossip, had nothing good to say about Trent and shared it with anyone wanting
to listen. She wasn’t quiet about her belief that Trent was responsible for
Molly’s disappearance.